Briefly, my morning horizon sings yellow and peach. Creeping gray pushes down, envelops. In the wilted ivy climbing a thick oak, wrens play hide and seek. The dog pulls and pulls again – the morning smells too explosive for his animal heart to ignore. Temptation is a street corner patch of grass.

Purple leaves (maple) curled at the edges crumple brittle underfoot – a sound almost deafening at dawn. This is what I remember at the end of the day – the swish swish of feet and leaves. If I imagine hard enough, it might lull me to sleep – dry autumn waves crashing the lawn.

Blustery and cold, blustery and cold, I’m not ready for this. Evening light fades quicker now and soon the trees will show their bones – their blushing reds fallen like a puddle of clothes at their feet. The windows keep the night air out – the table lamp a beacon in the dark.

I pick up my phone instead of sitting still. I pick up my phone as transition. I pick up my phone when stuck, bored, or tired. I could use it to text, to call, to hear distant voices. It’s sunny out. I pick up my phone to confirm what I already know.

Hundreds of starlings river north out of the neighborhood. The maple tree on the corner glows apple red in the dawn.  As If waiting for a parade, piles of leaves gather by the side of the road. Huddled and still like small mountains, they shuffle and grumble when the fall wind blows.

The sky was a fish, by which I mean to say I didn’t notice and it didn’t matter. It could have been anything, though perhaps not a giraffe. The potholes still need filling. I know it was cold. Bad meditation, worse judgment. I wasn’t present in my morning. I can do better.

Rain-slick streets reflect the white lamps on their long arms overhead. A neighbor’s patio umbrella wobbles open and overturned in last night’s wind.  Back from a walk, I’m pulled in different directions – thoughts swirl like leaves on the lawn. Time, work, writing, short-term plans, getting ready, dog. Clouds move fast, more rain.

The rabbits scurry, hop, and hide as we approach. The dog perks his ears and sharpens his gaze. Night lifts slowly giving shape to shadows that become bushes, trees, and piles of leaves. Another day, another day, another small attempt at pulling back the veil on my many desires, my minor deceptions.

A lone pine forms the left side of an open picture frame around an alpine-clear sky and luminously full moon. The bottom of the frame is foreground: arcing maple treetops, houses, and terra firma. There are distances to contemplate. The moon feels close and the air so big and breathable between us.

Above the rooftop ridges, the hunter’s moon low and large glows white with pocks of blue and gray. Every day, and twice on Mondays, it gets harder to play the game. Morning email blasts: how to have a productive week. Who defines productive? Perhaps we’re different hunters in search of different prey.